Home invasion nets 15-year prison sentence

The third of a trio of robbers who terrorized a Barrington Hills family, binding them with duct tape while raiding their home, received a 15-year prison sentence Monday.

Anthony Starks, 37, of Rockford, pleaded guilty at the Rolling Meadows courthouse to one count of home invasion.

Starks' brother Leville Starks, 32, and Frederick Neal, 34, both of Rockford, pleaded guilty in late July to home invasion in the same incident, and also were given 15 years each.

Armed with handguns and wearing stocking masks, the three men broke in through a basement window at the Barrington Hills residence Aug. 16, 2008. Prosecutors said they first confronted the father who had been watching television and ordered him upstairs into a bedroom.

The parents and their four children were tied up with duct tape while the intruders collected television sets, watches, a necklace, a shotgun and iPods.

"Their family will never be the same again," Cook County Judge Thomas Fecarotta Jr. said, adding if anyone had been harmed he never would have accepted the 15-year plea agreement. The maximum sentence for home invasion is 30 years.

The Barrington Hills couple sat stoically through the sentencing but did not make a statement.

Fecarotta asked Starks to think back to his childhood. "Were you ever afraid someone would break in and hurt your family?" he questioned.

"No sir," Starks said.

Prosecutors said that a T-shirt left by one of the robbers was found in the home by the couple and that it helped provide evidence in the crime.

Prosecutors dismissed 21 other counts against Starks. Outside of court, his mother, Dorothy, called the ruling unjust and said Starks was given little choice other than to accept a plea bargain.

Starks has two prior burglary convictions and also was imprisoned for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=309722">Two men get 15 years for Barrington Hills home invasion<span class="date">[7/27/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>